Valedictory to 1966

MEN OF THE GRADUATING CLASS

The work is done, the record is made and - brace yourselves - you are the result For most of you there are still studies ahead, but the experience of being a college student is over forever. Forever is a long time; it is one of the few facts of life that in the sight of both God and man means literally, "You've had it." This I suppose, is the real reason why this moment is traditionally and rightfully celebrated as being important to you and to all who care greatly about you, including let us say right out, your College.

It is fashionable today to reject the idea that a college can or should stand inloco parentis to its students. We who have served you here have tried hard to take full account of your alternating instincts in this matter for wisdom and selfdestruction. The trick, which I suspect will interest you more twenty years hence, is how to be less parentis without being being more "loco." You ought to produce a wonderful generation of parents and alumni if, when your time of perplexity comes in this as in all else, you can say with Hammerstein's King in The Kingand I:

"There are times I almost think I am not sure of what I absolutely know.

Very often find confusion In conclusion I concluded long ago... Is a puzzlement! What to tell a growing son!"

It is the glory of Dartmouth that we have tried to face together, as civilized men should, the puzzlements of both yourself and of humankind. Your College is the last institution you will know that cares about you that way, that much. In return, as I've said to others on this threshold of leaving, she asks only that you may never be free of knowing the man Dartmouth would have you be.

And now, men of Dartmouth, the word is "so long," for in the Dartmouth fellowship there is no parting.